You can hear the Q and A after this talk here: https://archive.org/details/QueeringSpeciesism
This talk was recorded at the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Oceania 2015 Conference in Melbourne. You can find out more information about this conference here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/conference-schedule/
You can find links to listen to other talks from the conference here: http://progressivepodcastaustralia.com/2015/08/14/108/
This recording is thanks to Kate from Freedom of Species: http://www.freedomofspecies.org/
Below is further information about the talk from the conference booklet, available here: http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-booklet-final-.pdf
“Do Gay People Even Eat Fast Food?” Queering animal liberation (animalizing
queer?)
JESSICA ISON
In this paper I will critique the normalization of queerness at the expense of
nonhuman animals. Firstly, I will outline the relevant historical narratives
relating to animal and queer liberation. Following this, I will focus on the
current ways in which queers are painted within a sterile, acceptable construct
in order to prove legitimacy for certain causes such as gay marriage or gays in
the military.
One way this normalization is also achieved is through queer people
exploiting animals. This papers central example of this will be the Burger King
Proud Whopper advertisement. I will discuss how its use of homonormativity
and the pink dollar, imbibed in a flesh eating pride celebration, is a crucial
moment in the sterilization of queerness. Further, the desire for animal flesh is
constructed as queer and thus normalized in the advertisement. By using
Pride rhetoric to sell their product, the advertisement reflects a larger issue of
the consumption of mainstream gay and lesbian lives.
This paper lastly situates the advertisement as a critical moment in the move
towards a palatable normative politic. Ultimately, this will be a call for queer
anti-speciesist activism that is not reliant on pretenses of happy meat and
queer normativity.
Jessica Ison is the Representative for ICAS in Oceania. She is a PhD
candidate at La Trobe University and the Chair of the Gender and
Sexuality Intersectional Research Collaborative. Jess is also a tutor at
RMIT in Criminology and Legal Studies. In her spare time she can be
found ranting about prison abolition and fermentation.
